The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Back to School Edition

With Iowa’s tax free holiday coming up this weekend (more on that in a second), we’re really focused on our back-to-school lists and preparations around here. Of course, for us, that means quite a bit of reading and studying up so we can have a good strategy to minimize our costs this weekend.

Here are some of the better articles we’ve found while preparing for the back-to-school expenses.

An aside: if you live in Iowa and have children in school, this weekend is the time to kick your back-to-school shopping into gear. Here are the details on Iowa’s tax free holiday for clothes this weekend.

Frugal Back-to-School Shopping This great list of school shopping tactics by Donna Freedman is well worth browsing through. The best place to shop for school supplies and clothes is at home, going through what you already have on hand. (@ get rich slowly)

12 Ways to Save on Back-to-School Shopping My favorite tactic here – and it’s one we’ll use this September – is to buy the obvious staples in September for the following August. Why? In September, items are on incredible discount as stores are trying to get rid of the merchandise. (@ mint)

Back to the Wrong School Here’s some food for thought about the lessons learned in school. A quote: “If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.” (@ seth’s blog)

Books worth budgeting for

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